Bork Role in Firing Cox Led to Protests

Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork says his role in firing Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973 caused a flood of abusive telephone calls to his house, along with letters and telegrams of outrage.

“I was in the phone book and people were calling from all over,” Bork said in a 1984 interview with the Washington Post. The interview was given on condition it be published only if he were nominated to the Supreme Court.

“I guess one day they dropped this whole wad of telegrams on my desk, you know,” Bork said in the interview published Sunday. “It was pretty intimidating. Benedict Arnold, Judas Iscariot and so forth and so on. There were letters of support too. I expected that because the night I did it, I knew it was big trouble.”

Bork, now a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge, was the solicitor general 14 years ago when he fired Cox after then-Atty. Gen. Elliot L. Richardson resigned and his deputy, William D. Ruckelshaus, was fired for refusing to carry out President Richard M. Nixon’s orders. The Oct. 20, 1973, incident became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

Bork’s role in the incident is expected to be examined in Senate hearings on his nomination to succeed retiring Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Bork said he has no doubt that he was correct in firing Cox.